A George Crumb Celebration

The University of Colorado's Faculty Tuesdays has started up again with the beginning of the fall semester. The first two weeks featured Peter Cooper on oboe, and David Korevaar's Clavier Trio. Both concerts were good starts for the season.

Korevaar chose an interesting transcription of Arnold Schoenberg's "Verklärte Nacht" by Eduard Steuermann. I've always liked this piece but was somewhat taken back by the use of the piano. The violin (Arkady Fomin) and cello (Jesus Castro-Balbi) were too often covered by the piano that it just didn't sit right with me.

And then this week ....... A George Crumb Festival!!

Steve Bruns, Hsing-ay Hsu and Daniel Kellogg, all Colorado faculty members, coordinated four nights of the music of George Crumb to celebrate Crumb's 80Th birthday. Crumb was there each night and was warmly received by the audience, faculty and performers. Some of the scores of some of his music were posted on the walls of a reception room and aren't like anything that I could figure out. Circular staffs, clusters of chords; pointers and arrows; strange inscriptions which must mean something to someone. Typical Crumb, I suppose. At CU there were also afternoon lectures and master classes and recitals that I couldn't make but which, I'm told, were fun.

Crumb began his academic career at Colorado in the early 60s, then taught at the University of Pennsylvania until his retirement in 1999. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1968, among other international prizes. Much of his music is available on 13 CDs from Bridge records.

My first exposure to Crumb was back 8 or 9 years ago when Giora Bernstein conducted a performance of "Ancient Voices of Children" at the Colorado Music Festival. In this work a soprano sings Lorca poems into the sound box of the piano with woodwind and percussion accompaniment I liked it enough to get a CD at the time but over the years when I returned to it the sound wasn't the same. When it's a CD compared to a live performance the CD always pales.

What is Crumb's music like? He's hard to categorize but you can recognize him when you hear him -- I think. I bought several of his CDs and I'm listening to some now. While I can't say I really like it, it is mysterious and interesting.

The first night's concert saw David Korevaar perform Crumb's "Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik" on a "well tampered-with clavier", ruminations on 'Round Midnight' by Theolonius Monk. During the week the pianists performed on a "well tampered-with clavier", a Baldwin. It was modified with a "Dampfenader" to control the damper and sustain pedals so the pianists could stand up and reach the piano's insides without worrying about the pedals.

Also on the opening Tuesday, 4 percussionists from the Colorado Symphony, Hsing-ay on piano, Patrick Mason, baritone and Julie Simpson, mezzo all coordinated by Allan McMurray did "Voices from A Forgotten World". The program stated there were over 150 percussion instruments on stage and I believe it. The songs included some familiar tunes abstracted in Crumb's way. Strangest to me was "Beautiful Dreamer" with Mason and Simpson whispering words to each other -- very memorable for some reason.

The next three nights were more Crumb -- lots of percussion; instruments played in peculiar but interesting ways; and voices whispered, shouted and often very beautiful (particularly Kristin Gornstein). While listening I sometimes wrote notes to myself of impressions of what I was hearing. Here are some in no particular order: instrumental abuse; shouts-singing-whispers; long "loud" silences; round-robin piano - 12 hands; minimalism without repeats; stand-alone sounds; missing melodies; sly inserts; lost sounds; unknowable wrong notes; piano inside and out - a real percussion instrument; tippy-tap and slam; unappetizing sounds; make believe music; endings of long silence.

Crumb has an affinity for Lorca and offers musical settings of his poetry. I've no command of Spanish, so whatever was sung meant nothing to me. Others commented to me about the same language issue. Why not have the songs in ancient Phoenician or Esperanto or some lost language from the Amazon? The communication would be the same.

I tried seeing what the Internet music streaming service Pandora "computed" for a George Crumb "station". After seeding Pandora with just George Crumb's name, it broadcast one of Crumb's "Makrokosmos" piano pieces. Pandora proceeded to then play tracks from works by Stockhausen, Bartok, Varese, Shostakovitch, Morton Feldman and Berio. I tuned it on the next night and got similar results. Crumb's music genome clearly computes to the 20Th century, but he has a distinctly voice.

Was the Crumb Festival successful? Most certainly! Concerts were all well attended, performances garnered standing ovations and everyone seemed to be smiling when they left. I'm glad I went and congratulate the school of music at CU for tackling an ambitious project like this.